Anita Roddick - Family Background

Family Background

Roddick was born in a bomb shelter in Littlehampton, in an Italian immigrant community, one of four siblings. Her family had fled Naples just before the Second World War. Her mother, Gilda, ran a café and was in the habit of recycling. She went to school at St Amy's Convent, and then attended the Maude Allen Secondary Modern School. Roddick's parents divorced when she was 9 years old, and her mother married her former husband's cousin, Henry, who died of tuberculosis after only a few years of marriage. It was not until Roddick was 19 years old that her mother told her that Henry was the biological father of Anita and her brother, but not Anita's two sisters. Prior to this Roddick thought that her mother's first husband, Donny, was her biological father.

After leaving school, Roddick trained as a teacher at Bath College of Higher Education (now called Bath Spa University), and travelled widely before her mother introduced her to Gordon Roddick, whom she married in 1970. The couple opened a restaurant, followed by a hotel. By the time they married, they already had one child and were expecting another. Roddick became the mother of two daughters, Justine and Sam, who, following in her mother's footsteps, runs her own business, the upmarket and ethical sex shop Coco de Mer. Roddick worked for the United Nations, for which she traveled extensively and met people from a number of different cultures. She founded The Shop in Brighton, in 1976. The first Body Shop was basic, offering only 15 products at first. The Body Shop's full range now has over 300 products.